Infrastructure Asset Management Planning – Funding Ports vs. Water and Wastewater Infrastructure

Savannah, Georgia has always received major investment in its port, which has placed it in pristine condition, created many jobs, and gives the city a good economic vibe.

What then is the problem? While the port has been receiving all the attention, the Savannah River has become the third dirtiest in the United States as of writing.

More than ever before, sewage from old and inadequate wastewater treatment plants is pouring into the river.

Circle of Blue reports:

“The nation’s waters are in perilous circumstances. Along with rising levels of contamination, droughts are drying up surface water supplies in Texas, California, and the Great Plains. At the same time, groundwater levels are receding from California to the Midwest.

Very clearly, more expansion and modernization in America’s water supply and treatment infrastructure is warranted. With interest rates at historic lows, the timing could not be better, according to the International Monetary Fund, which found in a recent study that public infrastructure investment boosts GDP and ends up paying for itself. Economic damage to agriculture, manufacturing, energy production and metropolitan economies hangs in the balance if the U.S. water wounds are left to fester.

Unfortunately, the new era of water scarcity and contamination, unlike the global shipping trade, has no deadline to motivate more investment. Port authorities are hustling to install upgraded facilities to handle the additional cargo that will start to flow through the Panama Canal next year. Yet the growing number of seismic hydrological events — the California and Texas droughts, the Lake Erie poison algae, big chemical and coal ash spills in West Virginia and North Carolina — have prompted comparatively modest regional, state, and national responses. Water problems just don’t generate the level of public clamor, for instance, that greeted Miley Cyrus’ 2013 introduction of twerking to a national audience.”

The main concern is that at some point the nation’s attention will turn to water supply and quality, and by then it will be even more expensive than it is now.

It is estimated that in order to fix and replace all of America’s aging infrastructure, it will cost from 1-2 Trillion $US over the next two decades.

This is a figure nobody is quite ready to contemplate. It’s worth the cost, but how can the funding be found?

Inframanage.com notes that the USA has been well served with water and wastewater infrastructure, that at its core is designed to protect public health.

As a period of re-investment approaches for US municipal and utility authorities, the disciplines and tools of infrastructure asset management will assist authorities to prepare for and prioritize this investment.

The US debate around funding is set to continue for some time yet, and the trillion-dollar estimate is not insignificant.  

While this funding debate continues, Inframanage.com encourages authorities to undertake infrastructure asset management planning, and prepare asset management plans, so that when funding streams become available the planning is in place to proceed with an optimal program.